{"id":4200,"date":"2013-04-04T10:02:12","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T10:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4200"},"modified":"2013-04-04T10:02:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T10:02:12","slug":"how-700-million-in-katrina-relief-money-went-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4200","title":{"rendered":"How $700 million in Katrina relief money went missing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/katrinaloot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-4201\" title=\"katrinaloot\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/katrinaloot.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"265\" height=\"190\" \/><\/a>Where did all the money go?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cYour guess is as good as mine,\u201d David Montoya, the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says of $700 million in missing taxpayer money that Louisiana homeowners were given in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to elevate and protect their homes from future storms.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A new report released from the inspector general\u2019s office shows that more than 24,000 homeowners who received grants of up to $30,000 to elevate their homes either misspent or pocketed the money.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe fact of the matter is that the money they received was for a specific purpose and the specific purpose was to elevate these homes to avoid future catastrophes,\u201d Montoya tells Power Players.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He rates the home elevation program as little more than a complete failure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cConsidering there was just under $1 billion earmarked for this particular program and there&#8217;s $700 million that wasn&#8217;t used for that, I\u2019d give it a very low D,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But the lessons learned from the failed home elevation project provides a useful roadmap as Congress moves to offer recovery funds to victims of Hurricane Sandy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cClearly, to give money out on the front end right after a disaster, when many of these people lost everything, with a promise to do something down the road, I think is counterproductive to what the program was designed to do,\u201d says Montoya.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Montoya says his office will recommend that, for future disaster relief programs, funds are disbursed to individuals only after the project has been completed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To hear more of the interview with the inspector general, including his explanation of why the government likely will never get the money back, check out this episode of Power Players. &#8211; YahooNews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where did all the money go? \u201cYour guess is as good as mine,\u201d David Montoya, the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says of $700 million in missing taxpayer money that Louisiana homeowners were given in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to elevate and protect their homes from future storms. A &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4200\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How $700 million in Katrina relief money went missing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[219,2023,2653,745],"class_list":["post-4200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-corruption","tag-hurrican-katrina","tag-katrina","tag-usa"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/katrinaloot.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4203,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200\/revisions\/4203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}